It seems that that the controversy regarding how much suffering an execution causes could be ended by just using general anesthesia ahead of the execution. Is it legal for a US state to use general anesthesia before executing a prisoner? If the answer depends on state, use Alabama and suffocation by nitrogen gas as execution method.
To clarify, I am not asking if it is currently legal by the state law, but if something is preventing that state to make anesthesia a legal part of an execution.
There is nothing in state law against it. The issue is what the courts would allow.
One of the major practical issues with the death penalty is that medical professionals are prevented by their ethics rules from participating. So the question would be whether it would be cruel to have someone that was not a doctor or a nurse administer general anesthesia. The courts would hear plenty of expert testimony on that subject but my wager would be that general anesthesia is sufficiently complicated (it is an entire medical specialty) that there would be hundreds of ways that an untrained person could screw it up and cause the patient to suffer either in the process of anesthetizing the patient or by causing the patient to be paralyzed but still able to feel.
